Remembering the French Wars of Religion
International conference
IPT Montpellier, 6–8 September 2018
Download the conference programme here
The French Wars of Religion have fascinated historians ever since the opening shots were fired in a barn in Vassy in 1562. Over the centuries, scholars have explored the myriad political, religious, military, and social aspects of these devastating civil wars. In recent years, however, researchers have also started to examine the memory of the Wars of Religion. They have asked how Catholics and Protestants looked back on the events they had experienced during the wars, how they recorded their memories, and what impact these memories had on post-war society. Most of the scholarship in this nascent field has focused on printed histories and elite memories, but we still know very little about the distinctions between local, national, and transnational memory practices; how memories varied throughout the social hierarchy, among individuals and groups, or within and between confessions; and what long-term impact traumatic memories had on early modern society.
A focus on memories contests the established view that the transition to post-war France was important primarily because of the policy of forgetting, which reinforced the authority of the French monarchy. When the Edict of Nantes ended the eighth civil war in 1598, it ordered in its first article that ‘the memory of everything which occurred ... during all the previous troubles, and the occasion of the same, shall remain extinguished and suppressed, as things that had never been’. Yet despite the edicts of pacification that compelled French subjects to forget the conflict, its memory has always remained a contested topic within and beyond France, with significant consequences for royal authority and religious coexistence within France and for exile communities beyond its borders.
More generally, this conference approaches the Wars of Religion as a particularly productive field for the wider study of memory, history, and forgetting. Can we distinguish between the study of memory and history, remembering and recording the civil wars? A range of sources might be re-evaluated in this light. During and after the conflict, people discussed events in genres such as diaries, chronicles, pamphlets, news sheets, engravings, paintings, and songs. They continued to do so long after the Edict of Nantes, and took their disputes from the streets and battlefields into the pulpits and the law courts. Oral, visual, and written media all had major roles in remembering the Wars of Religion. What difference does it make to focus our attention on how these sources were formed, reformed, and mobilised to different ends? From all of these perspectives, this conference aims to evaluate how the study of memory can reshape our understanding of the Wars of Religion.
A focus on memories contests the established view that the transition to post-war France was important primarily because of the policy of forgetting, which reinforced the authority of the French monarchy. When the Edict of Nantes ended the eighth civil war in 1598, it ordered in its first article that ‘the memory of everything which occurred ... during all the previous troubles, and the occasion of the same, shall remain extinguished and suppressed, as things that had never been’. Yet despite the edicts of pacification that compelled French subjects to forget the conflict, its memory has always remained a contested topic within and beyond France, with significant consequences for royal authority and religious coexistence within France and for exile communities beyond its borders.
More generally, this conference approaches the Wars of Religion as a particularly productive field for the wider study of memory, history, and forgetting. Can we distinguish between the study of memory and history, remembering and recording the civil wars? A range of sources might be re-evaluated in this light. During and after the conflict, people discussed events in genres such as diaries, chronicles, pamphlets, news sheets, engravings, paintings, and songs. They continued to do so long after the Edict of Nantes, and took their disputes from the streets and battlefields into the pulpits and the law courts. Oral, visual, and written media all had major roles in remembering the Wars of Religion. What difference does it make to focus our attention on how these sources were formed, reformed, and mobilised to different ends? From all of these perspectives, this conference aims to evaluate how the study of memory can reshape our understanding of the Wars of Religion.
